The Twilight Cafe

Twilight Cafe is a menu and restaurant concept that was inspired by futuristic themes and motifs of the 50s as well as stylizations from the cartoon The Jetsons. Boomerang shapes, things relating to outer space, colors blue, pink, red and green, the future, exploration and modernism were heavy themes that shaped the design output during the 50s and the early part of the 60s. I decided to first create a menu design using these ideas. I wanted the menu to be playful, intriguing, reflective of the look and feel I was going for and interactive to some degree. The prices and selections of the menu items had to represent the time period and style. Prices were of course going to be much lower. For example, a burger might be 50 cents or a sundae might be a nickel rather than what the prices are today. A restaurant such as this would offer traditional American foods that would fit into the theme.

I discovered during my research that it was common for many restaurants during the 50s to offer juices and fruit selections as appetizers. Today these items are normally sold as side orders or placed within the beverage or dessert menu so it would look rather unusual to see juices offered as starters now. These two pieces are vector illustrations and were created entirely in Illustrator. I also created a tangible copy of the menu. I printed out the layout for the menu, had it assembled, laminated and presented as a real menu that a restaurant would actually use.

"Panash"

I have many alter egos that are based off of various sides to my personality and moods that I often fall into. Panash [PA-nosh] is a character that I created several years ago. He has a suicide king complex and he is also one of the characters to my Pink Laughter Kingdom word concept which I will be developing into fantasy-adventure a book series over time.

I created him in several modes. Sometimes he appears in a red rather than blue clown suit with knives as hands and amid a background of fireworks and brilliant light displays. His hair is wild, chaotic and has a life of its own. He often ties up his hair with balls of light orbs in the colors lime-green, purple and sky blue but sometimes he lets all of his hair down and they appear more like abstract snakes or dreadlocks shooting out in various directions in a reactive manner.

I started a company with some friends and former schoolmates about a couple of years ago. The entry, where I talk more about this, can be seen here on my post about the 3rd Eye Cinema website design.

He was created in Illustrator and Photoshop CS2.

"Cake Wonderland"

I am always full of ideas...especially concepts for products, services and businesses. What I love as much as design is the idea of taking an idea from concept stage all the way to prototype stage. Concepts for me need to come out of theory at some point and I am thrilled when I can do this with any of my ideas.

This illustration was inspired by my fondness for pastries, desserts and especially pastry shops and bakeries. I've dreamed of opening up my own shop in the future when money and time allows for this. I'd sell petits fours, cakes, cupcakes, tarts, creme-based confectioneries and much more.

It would be a place of delight and pleasure. Along with my intrigue for ideation, I enjoy the idea of branding. Branding goes hand in hand with conceptualization. An idea becomes an actual identity; a product or service which enhances one's lifestyle.

Cake Wonderland was one of these ideas. I plan to develop it further someday...to create a full blueprint for the business plan.

I find that having mascots or character icons is very effective for promoting a brand. Character depictions become the emboodiment of a business. I chose the character Airo from my Pink Laughter Kingdom world concept. He is one of the characters in this story world.

He is known as the elusive pastry chef. He head, always topped with a tasty cake on a platter, which acts also as a permanent hat, becomes iconographc for the cake shop, Cake Wonderland.

This piece was created in Illustrator and Photoshop.

The Asymptotic Faery

The Asymptotic Faery is a character design I plan to develop further. It's based on my writing identity under the same name as well as the writing blog site I started recently:

The Asymptotic Faery Writing Blog

The name, originally just Asymptotic Faery, came about several years ago as one of my alter egos. I have many alter egos that I like to characterize. The Asymptotic Faery's name was originally Inkair. I might still use this name for the T.A.F. character but for now it represents another facet of my personality under my real name.

Additionally, I used this name as one of my online discussion board aliases for a few years and it eventually stuck as a username.

The name depicts a state of mystique, curious intelligence (cerebral connotation) and childlike whimsy. More directly, the name implies my ability to relate to other people through ideas, thoughts and emotions while remaining quite solitary and distant on many levels. Others get close to me but never really get to know or understand me fully...so to speak. This has nothing to do with placing myself on a pedestal of any sort. The meaning should not and is not intended to be interpreted this way. It is more about my acknowledgment as a solitary person...tending towards being social on my own terms out of habit and nature. It also reflects my experience of being able to only relate to a few people in my life very well on a very intimate level.

The design was originally developed in Illustrator, but taken into Photoshop to add in background elements from other related pieces. I wasn't sure about how I wanted to interpret the look of the character. I had some other sketches in mind. I am still in experimentation stage...so the design can change if I wind up not liking it as much within a week or so. The character was a bit different than what I usually design because was very insect-like.

Originally, the legs were not encased in bubble sheaths or material as they are now. They just stood out of bare stick-like limbs. I wasn't too satisfied with that after a week had passed. I wanted the limbs to look more substantial.

I've also always liked the look of easter eggs, colorful beetles (especially scarabs), ladybugs, butterfly wings, reflective glassy objects with a hint of water and mirror elements and alien-like creatures. So this character takes on all of these associations. It's a faery...a unique being but it also has the ability to transform and adapt to various environments with its appendages and body.

The head is the central stagnant look but the character has the ability to change and adapt...body-wise.

I added in the character holding a shiny glass with pink liquid in it circling around several small planets which depicts a snapshot or section of the universe. The slogan for The Asymptotic Faery is, "The Whole Universe Inside a Glass of Water."

The meaning behind this slogan can be seen as my T.A.F. blog site linked further above.

"Confetti Palace"

I came up with the concept for this fictitious company about a year ago. I was working on a project in an Adobe After Effects course and the objective was to come up with an idea for an advertisement short.

I thought of many ideas but I wanted whatever it was to be fun, different, exciting and playful. I thought about my interests and desires in life. I've always thought that if I ever became very independently wealthy, I would often plan and host themed parties and events for friends and family.

I love the idea of entertaining and creating fun. I liken creating fun to the effect of an explosive display of confetti, fireworks or dazzling bright light shows. These types of effects and actions surprise, entice and engender a very euphoric and celebratory series of feelings. I think many people find anything that breeds these emotions exciting and alluring.

I also thought about the movie The Game with Michael Douglas and Sean Penn. The unusual plot of the movie gave me more ideas.

So I thought to create a make-believe advertisement for a surprise party planning business. I thought for days on what the business name should be as well as the slogan. I finally came up with the name Confetti Palace and the slogan: Celebrate The Unexpected!

I thought both the name and slogan were catchy and emotive.

I created a video for the advertisement in After Effects and after I completed the project, I uploaded it on YouTube. It can be seen here:



The music is by the artist Twink. He's a favorite. The title of the track is called "Not Enough Crayons For Everyone". He's an artist that uses toy piano to compose his music. He's quite the artist in many facets, which includes illustration.

I decided to use the graphics that I illustrated and designed for the video to create an advertisement for the faux business. Recently, I went in finalized the design and layout by illustrating it further. It was created in Illustrator and then taken in Photoshop to finalize the digital painting involved in many of the highlights, shadows, sky drop and surfaces.

In order to see the details of the piece, click on the image to download a larger version of the image in a new window.

"3rd Eye Cinema"

3rd Eye Cinema is the name of a company that I started with friends and fellow classmates in my Visual Communications program. A lot of us had the same classes throughout the program and as a result, many of the connections developed into friendships.

One of the most enjoyable classes that I had was my Final Cut Pro class. As with my 3D Studio Max course, I didn't know what to expect. I hadn't taken a video editing class before or done anything extensively with motion graphics. I was very intrigued however and as with all of my classes, I dove in head first.

We were given quite a few assignments and the theme of our final project was to be developed by the class as a group effort. The initial idea was to do a karate skit but I felt that we should perhaps do a horror film. I have to admit I wanted my idea to come through because I am a fan of horror genre films. I argued that this would be different and exciting and we could choose to add in other genres to a horror theme...for example, horror comedy, horror drama and so forth. It could have gone any way.

Everyone eventually agreed to my idea and we each brainstormed and worked on creating a plot. We decided to base the horror film on our campus...making it a whodunit horror film that took place in a school environment.

We worked through creating a storyboard after developing our plot, and we even got school administrators, other students in different programs, and various teachers involved in a lot of the acting roles. The next step was to shoot our scenes and take turns getting involved in different film crew roles so that we learned about all of the processes involved in making a short film.

I found that everyone became closer and I really enjoyed the energy and chemistry we had together as a group. It was so amazing that I started to think that we could do this as a business if we wanted to...if we all invested in the idea, put our heads and talents together and went for it. As the film was near the end of its production, I brought up the idea to my friend and classmate Emily. She immediately liked the suggestion and later we discussed it with everyone else in class.

This brought on, initially, the idea of starting a film/video club on campus. We talked to a few administrators and signed up for petitioning the inclusion of this club. Our idea was accepted and we started to have regular meeting and advertise the club around campus for others to join. We got great response and at some point, I brought up the business end of the film making idea again, but I wanted to include people who were in our small circle because that was where the trust and chemistry was.

Everyone in that circle came on board and we went ahead and established 3rd Eye Cinema. I was responsible, as president, for getting the business affairs together and establishing the meetings. We got the FBN statements filed, we began writing our business plan as a group and I mentioned I would start working on the website.

Some people agreed that one of my character designs was going to be the mascot design of the company. I had created a character called Panash [puh-NOSH] and I established the website design around him as well as our business colors which were blue, lime green and deep purple.

The page template was created in Photoshop CS, taken into ImageReady CS for slicing and rollovers, as well as optimization and then it was taken into Dreamweaver CS for further customization, set up and HTML adjustment. We were able to get a domain deal through one of our favorite instructors as well as web hosting. So once all of that was set up, I used CuteFTP to load the HTML and image files onto the server.

What happened to the company that we started? Well it was all about timing and ongoing collaboration. It was a tough year and we were all nearing the time of graduation so classes and projects were piling up intensely as well as personality obligations. Meetings were harder to schedule and hold consistently so over time, the buzzing energy around the business fizzled out and became scattered.

However, I still think it's a great idea and I still own the rights to the name and identity as well as the domain, so I'd like to do something soon with the business idea in the near future. It certainly shouldn't be completely abandoned.